The Wizards are back, and this time we’re blasting off beyond the BEAM to see how Elixir plays with Rust, Zig, Bluetooth, and whatever else crosses our wiring. Season 14 premieres on Thursday, May 29th, 2025, and new episodes drop weekly on Thursdays through August.
In the Elixirverse, we’re chatting about Elixir’s interoperability with other languages, NIFs and ports, what’s new with ML in Elixir, IoT projects, and more.
Watch the episodes on the SmartLogic YouTube Channel or tune in to the audio episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to stream podcasts.
Check out Elixir Wizards Podcast S14E01 Zigler: Zig NIFs for Elixir with Isaac Yonemoto out now on YouTube and audio.
Looking Back at Season 13: The Creators’ Lab
If you missed out on any of the episodes from Season 13: The Creators’ Lab, never fear! All the episodes are available for your listening pleasure.
Fun fact: In our brainstorming meetings, we initially named Season 13 “Creators Creating Creations.”
S13E01 Creating the Igniter Code Generation Framework with Zach Daniel
Zach introduced us to Igniter, a code generation and project patching framework designed to streamline the Elixir development experience.
After this episode, we were inspired to use Igniter for some of our internal tooling. Check out Owen’s article here: Potions in a Cauldron: Streamline Elixir App Development with Code Generation
S13E02 Creating VintageCell: Nerves, PCBs, and GenStateMachine with Bryan Green
Bryan rebuilt a 1930s rotary phone into a fully functional cell using Nerves, custom PCBs, and a hearty dose of GenStateMachine. He walked us through decoding rotary clicks, hot-swapping SIM cards, and shipping over-the-air firmware updates. Proof that “retro” and “IoT” can coexist in one glorious project.
S13E03 Creating a Local-First Offline-Enabled LiveView PWA with Tony Dang
Tony’s LiveView + Svelte to-do app works perfectly offline thanks to CRDTs, service workers, and Yjs. He explained the utility of offline functionality and how this capability can improve user experience, how to juggle LiveView sockets when connectivity drops, and where CRDT magic trumps last-write-wins headaches.
S13E04 Creating a Terrestrial Telescope using Nerves & LiveView with Lucas Sifoni
Indie developer Lucas Sifoni takes us on a journey of prototyping a remote-controlled terrestrial telescope using Elixir, Nerves, Rust, and custom hardware components. Lucas shares his approach to simulating hardware components, testing assumptions, and balancing educational value with usability.
S13E05 Creating the WebAuthn Components Library for Phoenix LiveView Apps with Owen Bickford
Elixir Wizard and SmartLogic developer Owen Bickford sat in the hot seat for Episode 5 to discuss his work building WebauthnComponents, a library for passwordless authentication in Phoenix LiveView apps.
S13E06 Creating the Standd AI-Native Due Diligence Platform with Stephen Solka
Episode 6 brings Stephen Solka, CTO of Standd.io, to the Wizards' table. Stephen shares the journey of building an AI-native due diligence platform that uses large language models to streamline document analysis for venture capital firms.
S13E07 Creating the Castmagic AI-Powered Content Workflow Platform with Justin Tormey
Justin Tormey joined the Wizards to discuss his AI-powered content creation app that transforms audio and video into engaging social posts, newsletters, and other marketing materials. With Elixir coordinating the backend and Phoenix LiveView powering the frontend, Castmagic leverages OpenAI and Anthropic LLMs to simplify workflows for content creators.
S13E08 Scaling the Daylite Apple-Native CRM Using Elixir with AJ
AJ (Alykhan Jetha) shares how their company built and evolved Daylite, a CRM designed specifically for Apple users. AJ recounts his journey as a self-taught programmer, detailing why Marketcircle migrated Daylite’s backend to Elixir for high concurrency and fault tolerance.
S13E09 Telemetry & Observability for Elixir Apps at Cars.com with Zack Kayser & Ethan Gunderson
Zack and Ethan run observability for millions of monthly users at Cars Commerce. They share the critical role observability plays in diagnosing incidents, tracing system behavior, and improving performance. For engineers tackling large-scale Elixir systems or simply looking to improve app performance, this episode offers a wealth of actionable insights.
S13E10 Creating Horizon: Deploy Elixir Phoenix Apps on FreeBSD with Jim Freeze
Jim Freeze, organizer of ElixirConf and creator of the Horizon deployment library, shares how Horizon simplifies deployment of Phoenix apps with Postgres on FreeBSD, minimizes external dependencies, and provides a fault-tolerant setup. Jim emphasizes the importance of owning your deployment environment and understanding your stack.
S13E11 Building an Open Vehicle Control System using Elixir and Nerves with Marc, Thibault, and Loïc
The Spin42 crew discussed their groundbreaking project: retrofitting a 2007 VW Polo with an Open Vehicle Control System (OVCS). Combining Elixir, Nerves, and Raspberry Pis, the team shares how they’ve transformed outdated vehicle tech into a modern, open-source system. The conversation covers the technical intricacies of OVCS, including building a Vehicle Management System (VMS), reverse engineering CAN messages, and ensuring safety with fail-safe modes.
Join the conversation
Questions or guest ideas? Comment on our YouTube videos or email us at [email protected].
Enjoying the ride? A quick review helps fellow Elixirists find us!
Follow us on BlueSky @smartlogic.io, on Twitter @smartlogic, and on LinkedIn
